Jan 22, 2012 -- 2:13PM, Eudaimonist wrote:

This TED talk (provocatively named Atheism 2.0) is about moving on from simply opposing religion.  The speaker basically says: "Of course there is no God. Let's move on. What now?"

Gee... I never knew that Atheism was "simply opposing religion." All this time, I and most other Atheists, thought it was just a lack of belief in gods.

Interesting talk, but it seems to me that if you haven't embraced culture in all its manyfold aspects you haven't really given up on religion.  The "I don't believe in God" concept of atheism has a very religious feel to it.  In day to day living not believing in God is useless.  It is what you do each day to find meaning, purpose, inspiration, motivation, and social reinforcement that is living.  I don't need to look to religion for that.  Been there, done that, and there are better learning experiences everywhere else.  I would suggest a better goal would be to find atheism 0.0 which ignores God, gods and religion as useless and not worth worrying about either for or against. 

I think it would be good, Mark, to introduce Alain to the Fellowship of Reason. They are enjoying much of the benefits of which he speaks.

Jan 22, 2012 -- 2:37PM, Eudaimonist wrote:

Any comments on the video clip?

If he started with the strawman "Atheist=against religion" the rest probably isn't much better. It would seem to be just another rant against a strawman to make his own position seem better.

Religion is local.  You can find churches that have traditional/country/rock/no music, are welcoming or excluding or tolerant of GLBT people, will/won't tolerate female leaders, have a hierarchy or don't, and a whole laundry list of other particulars.  I decided not to "shop around" much myself (maybe I landed in the right place to start with), but it seems to me that religious institutions have too many local variations to generalize about their strengths/weaknesses.  An analogy might be the variation in colleges and universities:  someone might really be a great fit at Cornell but would fall apart at Berkeley, students at MIT might not learn how to write as well as at Smith.  But they all serve a similar purpose (education).

How would an atheist institution differ from Unitarian Universalism?